CLINTON ENTERS '08 FIELD, FUELING RACE FOR MONEY

By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY; Patrick Healy reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington. Campbell Robertson contributed reporting from New York.

Published: January 21, 2007

CORRECTION APPENDED

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped into the 2008 presidential race yesterday, immediately squaring off against Senator Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic field in what is effectively the party's first primary, the competition for campaign donations.

''I'm in,'' Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail message to supporters early yesterday. ''And I'm in to win.''

If successful, Mrs. Clinton, 59, would be the first female nominee of a major American political party, and she would become the first spouse of a former president to seek a return to the White House.

Her entrance into the race followed Mr. Obama's by less than a week, and highlighted the urgency for her of not falling behind in the competition for money, especially in New York, her home turf, where the battle has already reached a fever pitch. It also set off rounds of e-mail messages and conference calls among both her allies and opponents. [Page 27.]

George Soros, the billionaire New York philanthropist, has made maximum donations in the past to both candidates, for instance, and last week he faced a choice: support Mr. Obama, who created his committee on Tuesday, or stay neutral and see what Mrs. Clinton and others had to say. In this case, Mr. Obama won.

Mr. Soros sent the maximum contribution, $2,100, to Mr. Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois, just hours after he declared his plans to run.

''Soros believes that Senator Obama brings a new energy to the political system and has the potential to be a transformational leader,'' said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Mr. Soros.

Mrs. Clinton's presidential operation is only one day old, but she already finds herself in a breakneck competition against Mr. Obama for fund-raising supremacy in two towns that she and her husband have mined heavily for political gold: New York and Hollywood. Mr. Obama's entrance into the race has also put up for grabs other groups that are primary targets for Mrs. Clinton, including African-Americans and women.

At this early stage in the nomination fight, securing donations and signing up fund-raisers are among the best ways of showing political strength in a crowded field (seven Democrats and counting). And Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are looking to raise at least $75 million this year alone.

Advisers said yesterday that they had begun corralling donors to build quickly on the formidable $14 million that Mrs. Clinton already had in the bank. They predicted that they would outpace Mr. Obama, though they acknowledged that he is moving impressively to try to match Mrs. Clinton's national fund-raising network, which has been in the making far longer than his.

Mrs. Clinton faces some fatigue among donors after more than 15 years of Clinton fund-raising, Democratic contributors and strategists said, and some skepticism about whether she can win. Yet she has the Democrats' most popular rainmaker at her full disposal, former President Bill Clinton, and she has influential friends like the lawyer and power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to help keep African-American donors and others by her side.

Notably, no prominent Clinton fund-raiser has moved to Mr. Obama's camp (though his aides are working on it). Mrs. Clinton has also lined up a powerful roster of fund-raising and economic advisers in New York, including the financiers Roger Altman, Steven Rattner, Blair W. Effron, Alan Patricof and Mr. Rattner's wife, Maureen White, a former finance chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

''Maureen and I will happily do everything we can to help her,'' Mr. Rattner said. ''Based on our long relationship with her, we feel that she has demonstrated incontrovertibly that she would be an effective candidate and a terrific president.''

For all of the attention swirling around Mr. Obama, meanwhile, he faces many obstacles as he seeks to become the nation's first black president. His background, including a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, has elevated his appeal, but it does little to answer questions about whether he has the experience to serve in the White House.

Picking off Clinton loyalists is no easy task, either. Hours after opening his fund-raising committee on Tuesday, Mr. Obama convened separate conference calls with donors in Chicago and on the East and West Coasts; in the East Coast phone call, according to participants, Mr. Obama asked them to keep an open mind about his candidacy even if they had been allies of Mrs. Clinton.

James Torrey, chairman of the global hedge fund Torrey Funds, said he signed on with Mr. Obama not as a snub to Mrs. Clinton, but because he believed that the Illinois senator had the best chance of inspiring Democrats and other voters.

''I know it's perceived as an anti-Hillary thing,'' Mr. Torrey said in an interview Friday. ''I think she's marvelous, I think she's a great senator, but I'd rather see Barack Obama as president. I think the Republicans will make it their life's work to bring her down.''

Several New York and Hollywood donors offered a similar assessment: they liked Mrs. Clinton as a senator, but worried that her rating in a new Washington Post/ABC News Poll released Saturday was at 41 percent, despite having nearly 100 percent name recognition.

Correction: January 24, 2007, Wednesday
Because of an editing error, a front-page article on Sunday about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential candidacy misstated the name of the university whose president, former Senator Bob Kerrey, commented on campaign donors. It is the New School, not the New School University.

Correction: June 1, 2007, Friday
A front-page article on Jan. 21 about the presidential prospects of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton referred incorrectly to the results of a Washington Post/ABC News poll on Jan. 19. The poll found that Mrs. Clinton had the support of 41 percent of Democrats questioned, not a favorability rating of 41 percent among all respondents. (Her favorability rating among all of those questioned was 54 percent.) The error was pointed out on Wednesday in a posting on the Web site of Media Matters for America.